Alison Krauss & Union Station - Arcadia (2025)

After a 14-year absence, Alison Krauss and Union Station are back just in time for the 25th anniversary of O Brother, Where Are Thou?, the movie soundtrack that really broke them through to the mainstream. And while the band was already a bluegrass supergroup—with Krauss on fiddle, Jerry Douglas on lap steel and dobro, Dan Tyminski on mandolin and guitar, Ron Block on banjo and Barry Bales on upright bass—it's now even more so with the addition of Russell Moore, who has joined as Tyminski is busy touring and recording on his own. (Tyminski, whose solo career took off thanks to the song "Man of Constant Sorrow" from O Brother, still plays a big role on Arcadia.) With Moore—the International Bluegrass Music Association's most-awarded male vocalist—and Krauss, the band now has two of the best, most celebrated singers in modern bluegrass, and the staffing shuffle seems to have energized everyone even though this is a rather dark record. Moore takes the lead on "The Hangman," a chilling musical version of the 1950s Maurice Ogden poem about a town where citizens are executed one by one; everyone is too afraid to speak up out of fear they'll be next, including the narrator who eventually is forced to the gallows tree. Ballad "Granite Mills" is a traditional based on the real story of an 19th-century industrial accident in Fall River, New York, describing the terror of mill workers, including children, desperate to escape a fire that killed 23 of them. A story of loss, "Looks Like the End of the Road" has a mysterious, Eastern European feel—melancholy stirred up by Douglas on dobro—though when Krauss lets out a "goodbyyyyyye" it's like she's flying straight to the clouds. She also sounds as crystalline as ever on the chorus of "The Wrong Way," a shadowy number written by Tyminski and Robert Lee Castleman that explores the end of life. And sometimes the songs just sound like heartache, as with the minor-key loveliness of "One Ray of Shine." But it's not all sorrow. Traditional "Richmond on the James" is a fleet treat that finds Block and Bales particularly shining bright, and the picking is absolutely breathtaking on golden "Snow." A luminescent cover of JD McPherson's "North Side Gal" doesn't lose any of the original's rockabilly spirit. And Krauss could be a Disney princess, hitting knockout fairy-tale notes on the sweet-dreams ballad "There's a Light Up Ahead."

TRACKLIST

1 Looks Like the End of the Road
2 The Hangman
3 The Wrong Way
4 Granite Mills
5 One Ray of Shine
6 Richmond On the James
7 North Side Gal
8 Forever
9 Snow
10 There's a Light Up Ahead